Severe pilots shortages in combatant nations during the Second World
War provided an unprecedented opportunity for women aviators to
demonstrate their competence and patriotism.

The Soviet Union: The
most dramatic and significant role played by women in military aviation
during WWII was by women on the Red Army Air Forces in the Soviet
Union. Here entire squadrons of both bombers and fighters were
formed entirely of women pilots. They flew largely obsolete
equipment from improvised airfields in appalling weather against an
Army equipped with the best anti-aircraft defences of the age, the
Wehrmacht's feared 8.8 mm flak batteries. Many Russian women
pilots were killed. Many more suffered serious injuries.
One of the women's regiments, the 46th Guards Bomber Regiment,
completed a total of 24,000 combat sorties, and allegedly all the
pilots in this unit made more than 800 combat sorties each.

Nazi Germany: In Germany
despite the early and extensive use of women in a variety of support
roles in the Luftwaffe's female auxiliary organization, women pilots
were not utilized except on an individual and exceptional basis. One of
these exceptions is particularly notable. Melitta Gräfin
Schenk von Stauffenberg. Countess Stauffenberg had earned a degree in
aeronautical engineering and was initially employed by the German
Institute for Aviation Testing (Deutsche Versuchsanstalt für
Luftfahrt.) While working as an engineer she earned her pilot's
license. She was instrumental in developing an auto-pilot for
German flying boats, particularly for long-distance flying on these
exceptionally awkward aircraft. She became the only woman in
Germany to obtain pilot licences for all classes of aircraft, powered
and unpowered. During the war she was conscripted to the
Luftwaffe, where she was responsible for improving the bomb site for
the Ju 87 ("Stuka") and Ju 88 dive bombers. To perform her duties
she personally made more than 2,500 test dives from 4,000 to 1,000
meters. She sometimes flew as many as 15 test flights in one day,
an extremely demanding physical achievement, which to this day has
never been equalled. She was shot down and killed by an American
fighter in the closing days of the war. No ideological bigotry
should deny Countess Stauffenberg recognition as an outstanding pilot;
both of her brothers-in-law gave their lives in the coup attempt
against Hitler on July 20, 1944; one of them, Claus, laid the bomb in
Hitler's headquarters.

Great Britain: Even
before the outbreak of the war, the British Air Ministry had recognized
the sense of employing already trained women pilots in support
capacities. Thus, when the war broke out, it was only a matter of
weeks before women were being recruited for an auxiliary pilot's
organization whose principle role was to become the ferrying of
military aircraft from factories to squadrons. This organization,
the Air Transport Auxiliary (ATA), employed at its peak over 3,500
people of whom roughly 640 were pilots. It held a monopoly on the
ferrying of military aircraft and also provided selected air charter
and air freight services to the armed forces and the government.
The ATA was recognized throughout the war as a vital and indispensable
component of the total war effort.

The women pilots made up on average 16% of pilot strength in the ATA.
Although initially only highly qualified and experienced pilots were
accepted into the ATA, by 1943 the manpower shortages were so great
that the ATA initiated ab initio training for women as well men.
Meanwhile, the women pilots already employed in ATA were
qualifying to pilot all types of aircraft in accordance with their
ability. By the end of the Second World War women had flown all
kinds of aircraft from light trainers and liaison aircraft to fighters
such as the Spitfire and Mustang and bombers, including the American
Flying Fortress and Liberator. In the closing months of the war,
the ATA women pilots were also flying the first operational jet
aircraft employed by the RAF.

In the ATA women also held command positions with authority over men
and as well as women. They served as instructors on aircraft for
men and women. Most important, they enjoyed the same conditions
of service and rates of compensation as their male colleagues. In
short, the ATA can be described as an exemplary case of early equal
opportunity for women.

The United States: On the
other side of the Atlantic the utilization of women pilots got off to a
much later and more complicated start. As late as July
1941, the C-in-C of the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF), General
Henry "Hap" Arnold, still categorically denied the need to employ women
pilots in any capacity in or with the USAAF. At American entry
into the war, however, the Ferrying Division (FERD) of the USAAF alone
needed more pilots than existed in the entire Army Air Forces of the
United States. To solve this problem, the Ferrying Division
received Congressional approval to hire civilian pilots, who were
unsuitable for commissioning into the USAAF for age or health reasons,
directly as civilian employees of the Army. FERD proposed to
employ qualified women on exactly the same basis as these men.
Unfortunately, a celebrity woman pilot with close ties to the White
House, Jacqueline Cochrane, torpedoed the idea because she rightly
perceived that such an arrangement would have eliminated the need for a
separate woman's organization and so provided no opportunity for
command position for herself.

By September 1942, however, the manpower shortages were so acute that
Arnold approved a revised proposal for the employment of women pilots
in the Ferry Division, albeit no longer on a completely equal
basis. This proposal provided for the creation of a single
experimental woman's squadron, the Women's Auxiliary Ferrying Squadron
or WAFS. Membership in the squadron was restricted to women with
a minimum of 500 flying hours and with a 200hp rating. Altogether
28 women with an average of 1,000 flying hours were sworn into the
WAFS. While the requirements were higher for civilian male pilots
joining FERD at this time, their rates of pay were just 65% of their
civilian colleagues.

When word reached Cochran about the WAFS, she flew back to
Washington
and confronted Arnold. Arnold abruptly agreed to establish a
"Women's Flying Training Detachment" (WFTD) and appointed Cochran the
director of women pilot training. The objective of this programme
was to see if it was possible to train women up to USAAF standards and,
if so, to employ them in non combat capacities which would free male
pilots for combat. Eventually, an entire training facility,
Avenger Field in Sweetwater, Texas, was put at the disposal of the
WFTD, although actual training remained in the hands of a civilian
contractor. Successive classes of women with 35 hours pervious
flying experience went through an average of seven months of training
here. A total of 1,830 women entered the programme and 1,074
completed training successfully. Although the majority of these
women were still in training when the program was discontinued,
graduates of the program served not only in FERD but were also employed
in a wide variety of other tasks. These included: target towing,
radar calibration, smoke laying, engine and maintenance testing, flying
as co-pilots at training facilities for aircrew, and the transportation
of supplies and personnel.

In August 1943, the WAFS and WFTD were fused into a single
organization, the Women Airforce Service Pilots or WASP, under
Cochran's command. Almost at once Cochran began pushing for the
"militarization" of her new organization. Since this required
Congressional approval, a bill was sponsored and introduced in the
House in late 1943. Throughout the spring of 1944, while the WASP
bill was before Congress, an increasingly virulent lobbying campaign
against the WASP unfolded. In June 1944, the WASP militarization
bill was defeated in the House. Just six weeks later, however,
Cochran issued a report to the press in which she insisted that without
militarization the organization ought to be disbanded. Cochran's
press release was widely interpreted as an ultimatum, and Air Force
Staff responded by recommending de-activation of the WASP, effective
Dec. 20, 1944.

Sisters at Arms
is comprehensive comparative study analysing the experiences of the
women pilots in the UK and US during WWII. It seeks to highlight
the differences between the organization, training and employment of
the women pilots in the two countries, and above all to explain the
differences in their fate.

It is fair to say that although the individual women on both sides of
the Atlantic were equally competent and devoted, the American women
were placed at a distinct disadvantage by a number of key
factors. First and foremost, they suffered from sub-standard and
excessively lengthy training. Second they were hampered by a
confused organizational structure lacking clear lines of command,
responsibility and discipline. Third, they were operating in a
far more hostile environment than were the women in the UK; the US Army
had a long tradition of treating women auxiliaries as "second class"
while the RAF pioneered with opening non-traditional opportunities to
women as far back as WWI. Last but not least, the WASP was the
victim of a disastrous handling of Press, Public and Congressional
Relations by Cochran.

The personal role of Cochran in the destruction of the WASP cannot be
overstated and forms the fundamental tragedy of the WASP story.
For the supporting evidence, please read Sisters in Arms.

NOTE: In building this site, I thought about many things - such as what spelling standard I should use in
referring to World War II, and what keyword spelling people might use
in a search engine to find this page. I found it interesting to
note the following numbers of page listings for the various ways one
might type World War II into a search engine.

6,050,000 for
world
war two5,860,000 for world
war 2134,000,000 for world
war II (using the capital i for the 2)83,900 for world war
ll (using the lower case L for the 2)26,200,000 for second
world war310,000 for 2nd world
war

21,600 for ww two804,000 for ww 27,130,000 for ww ii
(using the i for the 2)46,300 for ww ll
(using the lower case L for the 2)

21,600 for w.w. two804,000 for W.W.27,130,000 for w.w.II
(using the capital i for the 2)46,300 for w.w.ll
(using the lower case l for the 2)

Note
that
capitalization, punctuation and spacing changes introduced no
differences. So if you are looking for information on a
particular subject, remember to use all variations of the wrods related to the subject.
The pages a search engine will give you to look at will vary with each
method. Also in general, I have referred to World War II on these pages
using WWII (using the capital i for the 2).